Portrait Homes ,Pasquinelli Avoid Portrait Homes at all cost.. Quality issues, untruthful, will do the bare minimum to get by. Charlotte North Carolina

I know Portrait has had issues with J.D. Powers ratings and that they have been trying to clean up their act and get things looking better but I have to tell you that what they have done in the Hanover community in Indian Land South Carolina leaves a lot to be desired.

I purchased into this community along with 295 other homeowners based on some information we were presented, information that was shared in the office, and finally information which was given to each of us individually from all levels of staff witH Portrait Homes. I will speak from my experiences for a minute and then get to examples from the community.

As I stated, I bought my house based on some information provided by Portrait. I was told that there were going to be a number of parking spots built into the community for guest visitors (told this by the sales staff), told when choosing upgrades for my home that there was a vented hood for above your stove which could be vented outside for and additional 25.00 (told the only difference between the standard and the upgraded hood was that it would be vented outside) and so I decided to get the upgrade, only to find out while in the construction phase that if I wanted it to vent outside that it would be an additional 350.00 as the hood was available to vent outside not that it was going to.

purchased 4 ceilings fans for 250.00 each and then when we closed on the house the fans were not the fans we had agreed to purchase and they said tough. purchased an extended patio and the builder did not put it in and so I had to keep after Portrait to add on to the patio and when they did it was a cobbled up mess. they eventually came back and put a skim coat over it all so it looked somewhat even but eventually that started cracking and I told them I wanted it completely replaced as it should have been when it was installed so it would be one piece like I actually purchased.

I had windows where the casing were broken and it took them months to come out and repair these, a yard that has never been smooth to this day as they claim someone walked on it and that it why there are all kinds of dips and runts in the yard... Mind you the house was built in June 2007.....

OK let me tell you about the community quality issues.....We have cracks and holes in common areas that are large enough to hide kids in. we have homes where the roof lines coming down the front of the home line up on siding several rows apart in height, we have homes where the garage doors are not straight, we have homes where flashing is not covering exposed wood, we have issues with sidewalks in the front of homes being so sloped that folks can't walk on the sidewalk without almost falling over. we have issues with retaining walls tilting so badly that it will not be long before serious money will have to be spent to correct these issues. we have issues with grading being so poorly done that homes have mold from standing water when it rains, we have many, many more issues and the builder just does not care.

We have an entrance light that was not working when I purchased my home in March 2007 prior to it being built, it did not work for 16 months and the residents were told it was a transformer and that the transformer was defective and a new one was on its way. then they were told that the transformer was no good and so a new one was on its way...Finally after going back and forth in December the light came on but only to last for about 1 week. Then the lights were out again, and it has been discovered that there is not enough power to accommodate the correct transformers and Portrait does not want to pay to have it all fixed and order the correct transformers. The lights are still out today and they say we are going to take care of you...

there way of taking care of us is to IGNORE US, TREAT US LIKE WE ARE STUPID, LIE TO US, WALK AWAY WITH OUR MONEY, LEAVE THE COMMUNITY LOOKING LIKE CRAP, and we are turning over from them to the community HOA in April 2008 and they have no intentions of making any one of these items good....It is let's see how much we can get away with before we have to give them the community and then we will be done (I will say we want them out as they have done nothing but create a disaster for the owners as their sister company ENCORE PROPERTY MANAGEMENT is also in Chicago and that is who is suppose to be running this community from 1000 miles away - that is not possible and so nothing gets fixed, no one gets violations or notices because how could you see a violation from 1000 miles away).

One more example of the caring nature of Portrait Homes.....Portrait Homes was required by the Lancaster County Planning Commission and the Lancaster County Council to install walking trails and pocket parks within the community. These were never shown on a drawing, never explained to the owners when purchasing their homes, and many of the homeowners like myself paid a huge lot premium for our lots and would not have purchased in the community had we known about the walking trails and pocket parks.

With all that said, the community did not want the walks or parks and so the community went to the Lancaster County along side of Portrait to ask to have the walks and parks removed for a number of reasons. The residents felt it was a security issue as the walks would not be lit, the walks were next to the property lines of the residents and in some cases extremely close to some bedrooms, the walks then would require additional expense in upkeep from the community, the walks would allow animal lovers to have another place for their animals to deposit surprises and not pick up after them, and finally because most of the residents felt that we had enough walks in the front of our homes and why take up the beautiful green space and deprive our kids of safe areas to play which would now be ruined with sidewalks down the middle of them. Portrait wanted to remove the requirement for a pure financial aspect.

The residents as I said stood up next to Portrait and asked to have the walks removed for all the above reasons. I approached Portrait on behalf of the community and spoke with a Robert Price and he indicated that Portrait had already budgeted and set a side the funds to do this work and if the county removed the requirement that they would be forwarding these funds to the community. Portrait stated that to get the residents to agree to help eliminate the walks although we did not want them anyway. Now Portrait has taken the stance that since the county has removed the requirement that they owe us nothing...

As I said earlier, lack of response from management..What I meant by that is that I have written to the owner of Portrait Homes (Bruno Pasquinelli) in Chicago and explained all of this 3 months ago and never yet have I heard work one from him.

I wrote to the President in the Carolinas area (Scott Sokolowski) and to the Land Development Manager (Jeremy Koster and Shawn Carpenter) and each of these folks came to my house in January along with 4 other community owners and we walked the entire community showing them issues with quality, showing them things that were never done, discussing promises that were made and not made good on, and they treated each one of us as if we were second class and that this was a good quality job for what we all paid for our homes. I am sorry but when you pay for something new it should be just that new and like brand new condition and quality.

I love my home and wish I could just have it in a more quality community and that the folks I have dealt with would have been honest and provided what they promised me as I went through he process and agreed to the numbers we agreed to on the purchase but once we were into the construction they felt if I did not agree to whatever they wanted to charge that I would not get what I wanted and so I was stuck... I can promise you that there would never be a another opportunity for Portrait Homes to sell to me or anyone that ever asked my opinion of their homes or work.

Christopher
Indian Land, South Carolina
U.S.A.